In a National Hurling League game a couple of weeks ago, referee Johnny Murphy penalised a team for a technical infraction that was a mystery to everyone except Murphy. The names of the offenders are immaterial because it could have been any of us. A player took a short free to another player who was standing 10 metres away. The referee’s whistle went off like a kitchen alarm. Smoke everywhere.
“I gave a free-in against him,” says Murphy. “The players couldn’t believe what I was doing. The management couldn’t believe what the hell I was doing. You have to be 20 metres from a free – he was 10. So, I gave a free to the other team and advanced it 13 metres. That’s the rule. They never saw it before in their life. All I said to them was, ‘Lads, learn from it.’”
Hurling’s rules lead a twilight existence. Partly ignored, not always respected, not entirely known. Everybody understands the need for order, but nobody wants it to be an intrusion. The general attitude is that the rules should only be applied in extremis. Everything in moderation. It’s like being in a pub when the lights flash for last orders and thinking they’re not serious about closing. In hurling, nobody expects a garda to walk in taking names.
At Congress last weekend, GAA president Jarlath Burns said hurling didn’t need the kind of invasive surgery that has turned Gaelic football from a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Nobody would argue with that. But the gap between how the game is played and how the rules are framed has never been greater.
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Hurling has changed fundamentally from a game of contests to a game of contact. The emphasis on carrying the ball has created not only bottle necks in certain parts of the field, but a new spectrum of collisions. Defenders stand their ground, forwards run towards them, both players built like a flanker in rugby. Nobody would dare blink.
Over the last couple of weeks, a clip has been circulating on social media of a spectacular point Kevin Broderick scored against Kilkenny 25 years ago. It was as if a message in a bottle had lapped up on the beach. Broderick picked up the ball inside his own half, burned Philly Larkin on the outside, flicked the ball over Eamon Kennedy’s head and scored from inside the arc, without a hand being laid on him. Broderick was the smallest man on the field that day; speed and skill and evasiveness were his means of attack and self-defence.
A score like that is much harder to imagine now. That running lane wouldn’t exist. Somebody would nail him.
“If you look at the warm-up for any championship match, [the teams] are warming up for frontal tackles,” says Johnny Ryan, referee development manager in Munster and a former intercounty referee. “We are warming up to throw the ball, we are warming up for the loose exchange of hurleys and there’s no coach ever going to call players aside and say, ‘You can’t do that.’ It’s a case of push it to the limit.
“When a defender stands his ground and the forward shoulders him in the chest, that’s a foul under the present rule book. If we were to change that [or be more tolerant of it] with the way body bulk has gone in the game, you’re going to have serious injury, you’re going to have whiplash. It’s the Roman Colosseum; we don’t care as long as there’s fun and games to be watched. The crowd don’t want to hear a whistle.
“We have too much charging in possession. The art of hooking and blocking has gone out of the game at the expense of the body collide. There is no skill in the body collide. The focus in hurling has gone away from the ball to the man.”
When the whistle blows, the referee is often one of the co-accused, as if enforcement is a crime too. In recent weeks, opprobrium has also landed on the referee’s “assessors” and their allegedly coercive presence in the stand. It was a throwback to Brian Cody’s complaints at the height of Kilkenny’s dominance, when any literal application of the rules was regarded as an offence against the spirit of the game.
The role of “assessor”, though, no longer exists in its original form. The observers in the stand are now called “advisers” and are part of a support network that has been built around intercounty referees.
Apart from everything else, feedback is delivered in a different way. When the process revolved around assessors, there was a scoring system. A referee started each match with a score of 100 and marks were added or deducted according to the assessor’s judgment. The report might be three pages long and it would arrive in the post, cold and formal.
Over recent years, though, the system was reformed, both in tone and approach. The scoring mechanism was scrapped. Feedback is now framed under half a dozen headings, but it also involves a conversation between the adviser and the referee. The engagement is designed to foster improvement, not to generate pressure. In the arena, enough of that already exists.
“We still have a certain amount of assessment,” says Ryan, “but we’ve moved towards referee support and mentoring. The culture of what we’re doing now is to get the referee to self-analyse – to see where they did well and see where they could improve.
“But immediately, it’s a support. Like a player coming off the field and the manager saying, ‘Well done.’ The referee will get a text on the evening of the game and an assessment by email on Tuesday or Wednesday. By then he will have looked at the game. That’s followed up with a conversation.”
Referees, just like intercounty players, are in a high-performance space. Improvement is yoked to falling down and getting up. Early in Murphy’s intercounty career he was saddle sore from one rodeo in Croke Park. In the course of a chaotic National League game between Dublin and Wexford, he issued 16 cards and blew for 55 frees. None of the infringements were fictional, but, as you can imagine, the sky fell in.
“I had two counties who were a disgrace on the field,” Murphy says. “They did not want to play a game of hurling, they just wanted to act the eejit. No one came out and said the two teams were a disgrace. It was all, ‘the referee, the referee, the referee.’
“I was told afterwards (by his assessor) that it was the hardest game I would ever referee. As you get older you get used to it (the criticism and abuse). You shouldn’t have to get used to it, but it’s there. I hate this hands in the air on the sideline, calling for everything. Then the crowd are getting on your back because the management is going mad. But you see it, you hear it, you move on.”
Barry Kelly was one of the outstanding referees of his generation and is on the referees’ development committee now. He has been a mentor to up-and-coming referees too. What he sees for hurling referees now is a more challenging landscape than ever.
“For years and years football was harder to referee,” says Kelly. “Now, the whole thing has nearly turned. Because of the new rules, football has become easier to referee. The nature of hurling has changed. They’re running with the ball more. There’s more contact but because lads are so physically conditioned, they nearly don’t mind contact.
“From a defender’s point of view in hurling now, there’s not much you can do to stop a lad scoring from 60 yards out. But when they’re looking to score a goal, six steps is a killer for a defender (only four steps are permitted). What can you do because they’re brutally strong? One thing that has crept in a bit is a player taking four steps, then the player is challenged, and then four more steps. It’s as if the challenge brings them back to zero, which obviously it doesn’t.”
A new dissent rule for hurling was passed at Congress last weekend. In football, the new on-field sanction for this offence has been transformative. In hurling, it will come into force on the weekend of the National League finals – any dissent will cause the ball to be advanced 30 metres. From almost everywhere on field, that will turn a free into a scoring chance. In that environment, the pressure to be respectful will be peer-led. Whatever it takes.
No other significant rule changes are on the horizon. Murphy is convinced that the rule book as it stands is fit for purpose. The issue is ingrained behaviours.
“I had a player a couple of weeks ago who got a ball and ran straight at three defenders,” says Murphy. “And then he was giving out, wondering how come he didn’t get a free? I said, ‘You ran straight into trouble. You’re supposed to avoid trouble.’ These fellas want to go through players. He was penalised for over-carrying.
“Players have to take responsibility for their physique and how they use it. The game is more physical, yes, the game is faster, yes, but the rules are the same. Sometimes players don’t know the rules. They’re not coached in the rules.”
Ryan is conscious of that education piece too. “It’s a case of grabbing the game at the moment and saying, ‘Right, hang on a minute, this is what the rules allow us to do.’”
That will take a radical cultural shift. Football managed it.
